Mike Silver's NEW Article..

Yeah dumbed down boxing can be explained by the simple truth that senseless slugging is always entertaining.
Even for purists who appreciate the finer points, an occasional slugfest must be a "guilty pleasure".

People also like to see big muscles, handsome heroes, ugly menacing villains. Etc. Showmanship and other superficial stuff.
Sometimes at least.

That has always been part of boxing, at the big time popular end of the business.
Hence fights like Dempsey-Firpo taking on such mythical status.

 

Yeah, every now and then you come accross opinions so far out there, that you can hardly believe what you're reading.

On another site, there was this guy who claimed, that Robinson and Louis were so bad, that they wouldn't even be able to get a job as a sparring partner today! What can you say to something like that - nothing really, best strategy is to just ignore weirdoes like that.

But it goes both ways, doesn't it? It seems to me that present day boxing/boxers get disrespected all the time. How many times have we heard that boxing is dead or dying... and that today's boxers aren't tough enough to hack it in a "better" era? And how about claims like Wilder would lose to Tommy Burns, that Conn and Maxim would both flatten Usyk, etc., etc. On this forum I've seen Canelo being described as an "average" fighter - and Lomachenko called an "eastern euro bum"!

So yes, I think it goes both ways!

 

Foreman v Lyle?

 

Exactly.
I love that fight.

 

It was probably true in the early days of Sullivan to be fair.

 

People generally tend to be ill informed outside their own area of expertise. Unavoidably so.

Dunno whether we have a dumbed down culture or not. A lot of it may be dumber than it was 80 years ago; some perhaps not. I can see some evidence in both directions.

 

I agree with you, for the most part, but can't resist pointing something out:

When you compare the "extreme" view that Burns beats Wilder to claiming that Robinson couldn't even be a sparring partner today, you are implicitly making the claim that Burns's era was inferior to ours. In the Robinson example, the "extreme" person is denying that a champ in one era could measure up to low level journeymen today. In the Burns example, the "extreme" person is claiming that an actual, lineal champ could beat a modern contender/beltholder.

I pretty much agree that Wilder beats Burns. But somebody who claims otherwise is ironically playing more by the "Don't malign any era" rules than we are.

 

Picking Wilder to beat Burns, is not the same as saying that Burns' era is inferior to ours. It's just saying, that it would be HIGHLY improbable, that Burns could overcome Wilder's HUGE physical advantages and punching power. That's all it says.

 

Hm...

Would he have a better chance against Willard than Wilder?

I would think that an era whose champion has so little chance against another era's contender that the champion winning borders on ludicrousness is a sign of a weak era.

Granted, size comes into it as well. But most people here would pick Marciano over Valuev.

 

So what exactly are you saying here... that Burns would have a reasonable chance of beating Wilder?

 

No.

I am saying that your post implicitly assumes a wide gap between the quality of heavyweights in Burns's era and the modern one.

I believe your assumption is probably right.